I am not interested in rules or conventions. Photography is not a sport.

No amount of toying with shades of print or with printing papers will transform a commonplace photograph into anything other than a commonplace photograph.

Photography is still a very new medium and everything must be tried and dare.

Sometimes they are a matter of luck; the photographer could not expect or hope for them. Sometimes they are a matter of patience, waiting for an effect to be repeated that he has seen and lost or for one that he anticipates.

A photographer must be prepared to catch and hold on to those elements which give distinction to the subject or lend it atmosphere.

I consider it essential that the photographer should do his own printing and enlarging. The final effect of the finished print depends so much on these operations.

And only the photographer himself knows the effect he wants. He should know by instinct, grounded in experience, what subjects are enhanced by hard or soft, light or dark treatment.